I keep installing and trying OpenOffice from time to time. I've a veteran user of word processors--I gnawed at the teat of WordStar and GeoWorks Writer, was enamored of AmiPro, put in my time with WordPerfect, and have been using MS Word as long as I have been married (15 years). While I can make my way around just fine, some things either don't work well or are non-intuitive to other members of my family who, admittedly, were reared on MS Word. I just installed the latest version of the OpenOffice Writer to a brand new laptop two weeks ago mostly because I could not find my MS Office XP Pro CDs--I had that installed on my previous laptop. After my most recent experiences, I'll be uninstalling OpenOffice as soon as I find those CDs.
The handling of the scroll speed when doing a click and drag highligh was dreadful. If I stayed on the same page, everything was fine, but if I had to cross a page border, the scrolling would speed up so much that I overshot my mark--by a page or more--almost every time.
When I didn't see an immediate option to edit the header area, and since I've learned the ropes of many word processing programs and have no aversion to searching out features, I found it as an option under "Insert". Sure, I found it, but when my wife had OpenOffice (the full suite) installed on her laptop a few months ago, she didn't find it until after I showed it to her. I don't even find that menu choice intuitive. I assume that the header is already there, hidden from view. I'd expect to view the header, not insert it.
Oh, and if they would like to see OpenOffice used more in an academic setting, they really need to include a control for hanging indents in the paragraph format dialog box.
If saving in ODF, I had no problems at all with formatting, but once I set the default save format to be MS Word XP compatibtle (because one of my grad school profs requires MS Word documents and won't even take RTF), I had problems:
- When re-opening documents saved in the MS Office XP-compatible format, spaces would disappear between words (seemingly) at random. I'd find the problem in a different section of the document each time I opened it.
- I kept losing marks because my papers were, supposedly, not submitted in APA format (something I was careful to do before I sent them in). So, I did what any techie would do--I took a copy of the document to one of my other PCs that still has Office installed, and the document opened with different formatting. All of the first line indents were gone. My hanging indents on the References page were gone, too. That explained the lost points, but I had to wonder "Why?"
I know there are those of you out there who love OpenOffice to death. Good for you. I'm not posting this to rip OpenOffice.org as much to concur about the point that was made about much Open Souce programming not being consumer-friendly. It's certainly a viable option for some, but I found even myself getting frustrated with all of its little quirks and variables. No, I didn't take time to report these annoying issues. I just wanted to get my papers done. Remember that my mindset here--that I did not want to spend time reporting issues because I just wanted to get my work done--is really one of the main things people need to understand about the consumer marketplace. People don't want to learn some new software in order to create documents, they just want to create documents. Whether or not you like it, Microsoft has had a huge influence on the user experience with software. If you want to ensure consumers will have no qualms about your Open Source project (and by "no qualms" I mean that you reduce the chance that they will try you and dump you to near zero), make sure it behaves the way they expect it to behave. To all in the Open Source movement, good luck in making that happen--I wish you all the best. To the OpenOffice.org folks: I'll try you again after the next major release, or in about a year, whichever is first.
I, too, just bought one with a glossy screen. I belabored the decision for days. When I first turned on the laptop, I was sitting in a chair with my back to a curtained window. The reflection was intense. What surprised me most was that I was able to tune it out almost immediately. In fact, I've been able to use the laptop in conditions where my previous flat/dull LCD would have been washed out by light.
I think, most of all, it's a matter of preference, but I believe most people can acclimate to the glossy displays rather quickly.
Some smaller, local/regional papers are bucking the trend. While definately not a primary source for national/international news, they cover local issues and current events that impact the region. The Winsted Herald Journal (hjpub.com) is one such paper. I had a talk with the editor during this past year and, surprisingly, the paper is growing. Ad revenues, while not what they once were, are still fairly strong. This may be, in part, to the rural/exurban demographic of the area, but it is interesting nonetheless.
That said, their online presence is largely dreadful. There are way too many ads (the site is overstuffed with them), and navigation is wanting. Their online edition does not carry all the news items in the print edition, and they do not archive most of their story photos online. Still, they don't do too bad for a publisher serving their particular market. The paper's main offices are about one hour west of Minneapolis, Minnesota.
I think the greater concerns for the college are that such live action games are disruptive on campus, and that some player or injured bystander will eventually file a claim against the college's insurance policy (or even sue).
Of course, if planned well and played with a pre-established set of rules, such risks may be kept to a minimum.
In high school, we used to play KILLER (some people know it as "Hit Man" or "Assassin") where everyone who signed up was given a target card and was then required to take out the opponent using any legal (as defined by the game rules) weapon. When you completed a kill, you collected your victim's target card and moved on. My favorites were the carboard/plastic knife, the water gun (easy to prove the other was hit), and the grenade (a water balloon). We had specific rules as to where you could or could not play (e.g., not in classrooms, not in places of worship, not in cemetaries), and had recommendations for play in the broader community. Whipping out a realistic looking plastic pellet gun in the middle of a crowded supermarket was never a good idea (especially at a time when there were no laws requiring that toy guns have orange barrel ends--one friend had a water gun that was a perfect replica of a baretta).
One of my favorite memories was a drive-by watergun attack on a target in the parking lot of a local grocery (in the days when supersoakers were new and uncommon). My least favorite memory? Being judged dead after my assassin dropped a feather pillow on me from above--a pillow with "200 lb. block" written on it with a marker!
At the Lutheran church I attended as a child, the well water came up through a sulferous layer of rock. Every time the water ran, the place reeked of rotten eggs. Maybe it wasn't the sermons that put us to sleep all those years...
Agreed, but Amazon has lower overhead costs due to not maintaining a brick-and-mortar empire and all of the peripheral expenses. Wal-mart's distribution network alone is huge and a primary cost of operation--regional warehouses and armies of trucks. Amazon ships through common carriers directly to the consumer--there's no cost to ship first to a store (with all of a store's associated costs).
Amazon has far less invested in buildings and other fixed costs. Amazon also, while a large company for an Internet retailer, is small when compared to Wal-Mart in terms of staffing, and staffing is the #1 expense for any retailer (unless you count those folks who were selling cheap foreign backpacker guitars for 99 cents on eBay and then charging $16 for shipping).
Remember, too, that while their fixed costs are diluted across all of their sales, not all stores are making sales every hour of the day. Wal-Mart doesn't make $4.69 on a CD--that's their gross margin. Their gross profit comes into play later when looking at their financial statements.
If you've ever owned a business or been in management, these numbers should not seem unrealistic. I worked for a small, regional fitness club once as an accounts payable clerk. We had an outside audit and consulting firm come in to review our operations. They calculated the cost of writing each check to be $5 (this was in 1996). The calculation of cost seemed rediculous on the surface--writing a check might take two minutes inclusive of the time to log the entry in the books. Yet, if you considered all of the additional costs of having the employee--wages, taxes, benefits, office space, management time, payroll time (et al., ad nauseum)--justifying the $5 figure was very simple.
So, after we send more and more people over the course of a few decades, the colony becomes self-sufficient, declares independence, and establishes trade relations with Earth. Then, within 100 years, we could be at war! Just think what it will do for the defense budget. The Pentagon better get on it right away!
I will always remember Mr. Gygax as the man who, while villified by many, was responsible for introducing me to a world of unlimited imaginations where grand adventures took form. The doorway of imagination he opened through his game allowed me to dream bigger dreams and to imagine entire worlds within my own mind. More than any English teacher, Mr. Gygax, albeit indirectly, moved me to write stories of epic scale. Without Dungeons & Dragons, neither would I have known so many great friends.
Now he has passed from the game we call life. I don't think Mr. Gygax failed his last saving throw, but rather that the Great DM determined that it was time for his character to be retired. He will be missed.
Well, uh, I would theorize it's something like--well, you know, just like in that old Commodore 64 game--the inability of the tech--ooh! did you see the latest news on AMD--oh, as I was saying, it might have something to do with, well, that some technologists (as some of us prefer to be called) just ain't good communikators.
Hey, what were we talking about? I thought Slashdot had posted a news item on giraffes blocking IT Geeks from responding to a trouble ticket in the boardroom?
There was a photographer named Randy (can't remember the last name) in/around Richland Center, Wisconsin who shot my wedding. We got not only the prints, but the negatives, too. He just wanted to be able to use copies of the prints for advertising his business. He made two sets of prints--one for himself and one for us. Call around to colleges and see if you can find some photography student who needs a little extra income.
I recently had the opportunity to copyright a song I wrote. I was amazed by something, and I wonder why it does not apply to photography in general. If you created your work (e.g., paiting, song, photograph) as a commissioned work (i.e., you were hired by someone to create it), then the copyright is owned not by the artist, but by the person or organization who commissioned it. In a photo studio sense, wouldn't it make sense that you (the customer) are the patron who is commissioning the work (the portrait or photo shoot)?
Does anyone know whether the ownership of a paid-to-shoot photograph has ever been challenged this way?
I was shocked a number of years ago when I was moving some furniture so the floors could get cleaned behind the beds. There, under my (then) five year old's mattress, was a complete list of all of my (and my wife's) passwords. He had everything (from multiple machines): power-on passwords, logon passwords, email account passwords, merchant passwords--even our online banking passwords!
[No, they were not all the same. Some of them were quite complex, too, like 'ni*45FPN!ng'. I got to play "change-the-password" for a few hours that evening.]
I asked him how he got them: he shoulder-surfed us for every one of them. The reason he had them? He wanted to sneak down to the computer at 3 in the morning and play Spooky Castle.
That scared the snot out of me. Now, I know he may not be the typical kid, but it just goes to show that you really can't be too careful with your passwords.
As to the boy, I started encouraging him to use his powers for good. I teach network administration at an area college, so I started bringing him with when I had to configure the lab. He caught on quick, and was a huge help. He's just over 11 now, and while he's still one of the most tech savvy kids in the house, he has little interest in PCs (that might be a good thing). He'd rather spend time outdoors (even when it's thirty below zero) or with his pet cockatiel.
I've been both a buyer and seller, and I agree that the fee change is bigger news. Most of the items I sell come in around $25, and now eBay will take a bigger piece of each of those transactions. Were I doing this professionally, that means my margins either just shrunk or I would have to raise prices going forward.
On the buyer feedback thing, I've only ever received one negative. A seller marketed a product as new and unopened. I purchased the item, but when I received it, it was clear that the seals were broken and the box was opened. When I contacted the seller, s/he indicated that s/he had to do it to make sure I was receiving a working product, so there would be no need for a return. It was a hand-held game device and I had no cartridges with which to test it, and it was six weeks before Christmas (so it would have been too late for a return by the time we could test it). I asked if I should return it for a refund, or if the seller would consider a small price adjustment. The seller's next email message told me to torque off, and he left me negative feedback.
I was planning on leaving positive or neutral feedback, depending on the outcome of my request, but this seller would not admit the misrepresentation and left me no choice but to post negative feedback.
Needless to say, that was about 15 months ago. I've neither bought nor sold anything on eBay in the past year. I don't think I will be going back.
In all likelihood, I believe the RIAA would prefer to make copyright infringement a capital offense.
The executions, themselves, will be recorded (and copyrighted) and then tacked on the beginning of every DVD or future media type.
After a few years, consumers will be able to purchase "The best of RIAA Executions" in a variety of formats (each disk or download fully protected by DRM, of course).
Pardon me for reading the article (read about it in a couple of places, actually), but the scientists reassembled a replica of the genome using hundreds of partial sequences ordered from different labs. All they did was assemble them. It's no insignificant feat, but it is far from creating a new genome.
C'mon y'all. Would you say someone programmed a pieces of software if all they did was copy/paste code snippets from existing code, lined them up, and compiled it (they add nothing of their own). It takes smarts, yes, but it is not coding.
Ending slavery has nothing to do with an evolutionary process. It has to do with constraints of a moral society.
Remember, too, that slavery throughout most of history was nothing like salvery as it was practiced in the colonial era and in the United States. Being an employee today is not dissimilar to being a slave through much of history. People sold themselves into slavery in order to pay off debts. We work long hours to pay off our debts. If anything, the difference is in degrees of magnitude, not simply in the basic concept.
Pardom me if this mini-rant-around-a-question goes long. I started playing D&D (the basic boxed set) and AD&D ages ago--first on 1st Ed. rules and eventually ponying up for 2nd Ed. My friends and I liked the game because it was easy and simple (regarding game mechanics) in the first edition, and we did enjoy some of the changes going into 2nd E. (though we did opt to keep the original Ranger class, as our gaming world was very Norse and giant-heavy). For those of us who wanted games with more realistic (if you can use that term for a Fantasy RPG) combat mechanics, different skill allocation methods, and other detailed tables, we had RuneQuest, Palladium, and dozens of other options. The game was well-established, and players could be found anywhere.
With the arrival of the 3rd Ed. rules, you lost me as a regular player, along with many of my peers (we may be a bit older now, but we are the ones with regular salaries and a desire to continue the delusion of ongoing youth by purchasing simple amusements like games). I had no desire to relearn a gaming system that, for the most part, had its rules embedded in my head. The 3.5 Ed.? Didn't even pay attention. Fourth edition? Sorry, but not interested.
My own sons are old enough to play now. I've been shopping around for some of the early 1st and 2nd Ed. books so my kids and I may try out the game together, but until that happens, we bide our time playing Guild Wars (online) and Magic: The Gathering (offline).
My question is this: who are you trying to please? Do you have a core group of early gamers who will buy anything AD&D just because you print it? Are you attracting any younger gamers to the fold? If not, what's the point in publishing release after release after release? It's as bad as auto makers manufacturing '08 vehicles that are effectively the same as the '07s (Oh!, but the door for the gas cap is now square!).
The question I'm asking beneath the surface is, "Why should I care at all?" Unless the rules are relatively simple--something that won't require me to buy an entire library of books--you won't win me back. Once upon a time, only three books were needed for hours (months, and years) of fun: the DM handbook, the Player's handbook, and a Monster Manual (and the creative DM could get by without the MM). In all honesty, it looks like you are using the glorious history of (perhaps) the most storied RPG franchise of our time and using only as a perpetual money maker for your company. The more I hear about subsequent editions, the more I get the impression that you don't give a crap about the players out there (the people who made the game great in the first place), and that you simply wonder how much more you can squeeze the golden goose before it dies.
Regardless how little mercury is in a CF bulb, it still is mercury, and that means I can't throw them in the trash when they are dead. I have to pay to take them to a hazardous waste disposal site, and some in our area are pressing to require hazmat cleanup for broken bulbs.
Now, in a house with only adults, broken bulbs may be a rare occurrence, but I remember tons of broken bulbs when I was a kid (and have had a few around our child-filled house as well). Unless regular curbside pickup becomes a reality, those bulbs will have to be stored somewhere until the run to the hazardous waste site is made, and not everyone has available storage space or a garage. People alredy throw these bulbs in the trash. While the amount of mercury in each may be far less than in one old mercury thermometer, think of how many of these will be disposed by each household. It will add up.
I'm not opposed to the use of CF bulbs, but am opposed to being forced to use them. Have you found one that works with a dimmer switch? I'm more in favor of allowing CF bulbs to remain an option, but moving more quickly toward LED lighting. They use even less energy, last even longer, and do not have the same level of contaminant concerns as CF bulbs (whether you accept all the CF contaminant arguments or not).
Under U.S. law, a company does not need to be a true monopoly (i.e., the only player in a sector) to be classified a monopoly. The threshold there (imlu, ianal) is whether or not the company yields monopoly-like influence over the market, including the creation of significant barriers to entry for potential competitors.
That said, the growing success of Linux (and the Mac OS)will ensure that one day--who knows how soon--Microsoft will use the Linux saturation levels as an argument against sanctions it faced (faces) as a monopoly. That's when the OS war will finally reach the point of full engagement.
Slashdot Mirror
I keep installing and trying OpenOffice from time to time. I've a veteran user of word processors--I gnawed at the teat of WordStar and GeoWorks Writer, was enamored of AmiPro, put in my time with WordPerfect, and have been using MS Word as long as I have been married (15 years). While I can make my way around just fine, some things either don't work well or are non-intuitive to other members of my family who, admittedly, were reared on MS Word. I just installed the latest version of the OpenOffice Writer to a brand new laptop two weeks ago mostly because I could not find my MS Office XP Pro CDs--I had that installed on my previous laptop. After my most recent experiences, I'll be uninstalling OpenOffice as soon as I find those CDs.
The handling of the scroll speed when doing a click and drag highligh was dreadful. If I stayed on the same page, everything was fine, but if I had to cross a page border, the scrolling would speed up so much that I overshot my mark--by a page or more--almost every time.
When I didn't see an immediate option to edit the header area, and since I've learned the ropes of many word processing programs and have no aversion to searching out features, I found it as an option under "Insert". Sure, I found it, but when my wife had OpenOffice (the full suite) installed on her laptop a few months ago, she didn't find it until after I showed it to her. I don't even find that menu choice intuitive. I assume that the header is already there, hidden from view. I'd expect to view the header, not insert it.
Oh, and if they would like to see OpenOffice used more in an academic setting, they really need to include a control for hanging indents in the paragraph format dialog box.
If saving in ODF, I had no problems at all with formatting, but once I set the default save format to be MS Word XP compatibtle (because one of my grad school profs requires MS Word documents and won't even take RTF), I had problems:
- When re-opening documents saved in the MS Office XP-compatible format, spaces would disappear between words (seemingly) at random. I'd find the problem in a different section of the document each time I opened it.
- I kept losing marks because my papers were, supposedly, not submitted in APA format (something I was careful to do before I sent them in). So, I did what any techie would do--I took a copy of the document to one of my other PCs that still has Office installed, and the document opened with different formatting. All of the first line indents were gone. My hanging indents on the References page were gone, too. That explained the lost points, but I had to wonder "Why?"
I know there are those of you out there who love OpenOffice to death. Good for you. I'm not posting this to rip OpenOffice.org as much to concur about the point that was made about much Open Souce programming not being consumer-friendly. It's certainly a viable option for some, but I found even myself getting frustrated with all of its little quirks and variables. No, I didn't take time to report these annoying issues. I just wanted to get my papers done. Remember that my mindset here--that I did not want to spend time reporting issues because I just wanted to get my work done--is really one of the main things people need to understand about the consumer marketplace. People don't want to learn some new software in order to create documents, they just want to create documents. Whether or not you like it, Microsoft has had a huge influence on the user experience with software. If you want to ensure consumers will have no qualms about your Open Source project (and by "no qualms" I mean that you reduce the chance that they will try you and dump you to near zero), make sure it behaves the way they expect it to behave. To all in the Open Source movement, good luck in making that happen--I wish you all the best. To the OpenOffice.org folks: I'll try you again after the next major release, or in about a year, whichever is first.
I, too, just bought one with a glossy screen. I belabored the decision for days. When I first turned on the laptop, I was sitting in a chair with my back to a curtained window. The reflection was intense. What surprised me most was that I was able to tune it out almost immediately. In fact, I've been able to use the laptop in conditions where my previous flat/dull LCD would have been washed out by light.
I think, most of all, it's a matter of preference, but I believe most people can acclimate to the glossy displays rather quickly.
Some smaller, local/regional papers are bucking the trend. While definately not a primary source for national/international news, they cover local issues and current events that impact the region. The Winsted Herald Journal (hjpub.com) is one such paper. I had a talk with the editor during this past year and, surprisingly, the paper is growing. Ad revenues, while not what they once were, are still fairly strong. This may be, in part, to the rural/exurban demographic of the area, but it is interesting nonetheless.
That said, their online presence is largely dreadful. There are way too many ads (the site is overstuffed with them), and navigation is wanting. Their online edition does not carry all the news items in the print edition, and they do not archive most of their story photos online. Still, they don't do too bad for a publisher serving their particular market. The paper's main offices are about one hour west of Minneapolis, Minnesota.
I think the greater concerns for the college are that such live action games are disruptive on campus, and that some player or injured bystander will eventually file a claim against the college's insurance policy (or even sue).
Of course, if planned well and played with a pre-established set of rules, such risks may be kept to a minimum.
In high school, we used to play KILLER (some people know it as "Hit Man" or "Assassin") where everyone who signed up was given a target card and was then required to take out the opponent using any legal (as defined by the game rules) weapon. When you completed a kill, you collected your victim's target card and moved on. My favorites were the carboard/plastic knife, the water gun (easy to prove the other was hit), and the grenade (a water balloon). We had specific rules as to where you could or could not play (e.g., not in classrooms, not in places of worship, not in cemetaries), and had recommendations for play in the broader community. Whipping out a realistic looking plastic pellet gun in the middle of a crowded supermarket was never a good idea (especially at a time when there were no laws requiring that toy guns have orange barrel ends--one friend had a water gun that was a perfect replica of a baretta).
One of my favorite memories was a drive-by watergun attack on a target in the parking lot of a local grocery (in the days when supersoakers were new and uncommon). My least favorite memory? Being judged dead after my assassin dropped a feather pillow on me from above--a pillow with "200 lb. block" written on it with a marker!
At the Lutheran church I attended as a child, the well water came up through a sulferous layer of rock. Every time the water ran, the place reeked of rotten eggs. Maybe it wasn't the sermons that put us to sleep all those years...
Agreed, but Amazon has lower overhead costs due to not maintaining a brick-and-mortar empire and all of the peripheral expenses. Wal-mart's distribution network alone is huge and a primary cost of operation--regional warehouses and armies of trucks. Amazon ships through common carriers directly to the consumer--there's no cost to ship first to a store (with all of a store's associated costs).
Amazon has far less invested in buildings and other fixed costs. Amazon also, while a large company for an Internet retailer, is small when compared to Wal-Mart in terms of staffing, and staffing is the #1 expense for any retailer (unless you count those folks who were selling cheap foreign backpacker guitars for 99 cents on eBay and then charging $16 for shipping). Remember, too, that while their fixed costs are diluted across all of their sales, not all stores are making sales every hour of the day. Wal-Mart doesn't make $4.69 on a CD--that's their gross margin. Their gross profit comes into play later when looking at their financial statements. If you've ever owned a business or been in management, these numbers should not seem unrealistic. I worked for a small, regional fitness club once as an accounts payable clerk. We had an outside audit and consulting firm come in to review our operations. They calculated the cost of writing each check to be $5 (this was in 1996). The calculation of cost seemed rediculous on the surface--writing a check might take two minutes inclusive of the time to log the entry in the books. Yet, if you considered all of the additional costs of having the employee--wages, taxes, benefits, office space, management time, payroll time (et al., ad nauseum)--justifying the $5 figure was very simple.
So, after we send more and more people over the course of a few decades, the colony becomes self-sufficient, declares independence, and establishes trade relations with Earth. Then, within 100 years, we could be at war! Just think what it will do for the defense budget. The Pentagon better get on it right away!
I will always remember Mr. Gygax as the man who, while villified by many, was responsible for introducing me to a world of unlimited imaginations where grand adventures took form. The doorway of imagination he opened through his game allowed me to dream bigger dreams and to imagine entire worlds within my own mind. More than any English teacher, Mr. Gygax, albeit indirectly, moved me to write stories of epic scale. Without Dungeons & Dragons, neither would I have known so many great friends.
Now he has passed from the game we call life. I don't think Mr. Gygax failed his last saving throw, but rather that the Great DM determined that it was time for his character to be retired. He will be missed.
I could not help but note the irony: that the end of the best of the uber-heavy CRTs is due to "'the weight of plasma and LCD technologies.'"
Well, uh, I would theorize it's something like--well, you know, just like in that old Commodore 64 game--the inability of the tech--ooh! did you see the latest news on AMD--oh, as I was saying, it might have something to do with, well, that some technologists (as some of us prefer to be called) just ain't good communikators.
Hey, what were we talking about? I thought Slashdot had posted a news item on giraffes blocking IT Geeks from responding to a trouble ticket in the boardroom?
I guess this means that IBM didn't stand a chance, with all of those bozos who had to wear the blue shirts and matching ties...
There was a photographer named Randy (can't remember the last name) in/around Richland Center, Wisconsin who shot my wedding. We got not only the prints, but the negatives, too. He just wanted to be able to use copies of the prints for advertising his business. He made two sets of prints--one for himself and one for us. Call around to colleges and see if you can find some photography student who needs a little extra income.
I recently had the opportunity to copyright a song I wrote. I was amazed by something, and I wonder why it does not apply to photography in general. If you created your work (e.g., paiting, song, photograph) as a commissioned work (i.e., you were hired by someone to create it), then the copyright is owned not by the artist, but by the person or organization who commissioned it. In a photo studio sense, wouldn't it make sense that you (the customer) are the patron who is commissioning the work (the portrait or photo shoot)?
Does anyone know whether the ownership of a paid-to-shoot photograph has ever been challenged this way?
I was shocked a number of years ago when I was moving some furniture so the floors could get cleaned behind the beds. There, under my (then) five year old's mattress, was a complete list of all of my (and my wife's) passwords. He had everything (from multiple machines): power-on passwords, logon passwords, email account passwords, merchant passwords--even our online banking passwords!
[No, they were not all the same. Some of them were quite complex, too, like 'ni*45FPN!ng'. I got to play "change-the-password" for a few hours that evening.]
I asked him how he got them: he shoulder-surfed us for every one of them. The reason he had them? He wanted to sneak down to the computer at 3 in the morning and play Spooky Castle.
That scared the snot out of me. Now, I know he may not be the typical kid, but it just goes to show that you really can't be too careful with your passwords.
As to the boy, I started encouraging him to use his powers for good. I teach network administration at an area college, so I started bringing him with when I had to configure the lab. He caught on quick, and was a huge help. He's just over 11 now, and while he's still one of the most tech savvy kids in the house, he has little interest in PCs (that might be a good thing). He'd rather spend time outdoors (even when it's thirty below zero) or with his pet cockatiel.
They may be very much in use, but it just means the government work processes are also obsolete.
I've been both a buyer and seller, and I agree that the fee change is bigger news. Most of the items I sell come in around $25, and now eBay will take a bigger piece of each of those transactions. Were I doing this professionally, that means my margins either just shrunk or I would have to raise prices going forward.
On the buyer feedback thing, I've only ever received one negative. A seller marketed a product as new and unopened. I purchased the item, but when I received it, it was clear that the seals were broken and the box was opened. When I contacted the seller, s/he indicated that s/he had to do it to make sure I was receiving a working product, so there would be no need for a return. It was a hand-held game device and I had no cartridges with which to test it, and it was six weeks before Christmas (so it would have been too late for a return by the time we could test it). I asked if I should return it for a refund, or if the seller would consider a small price adjustment. The seller's next email message told me to torque off, and he left me negative feedback.
I was planning on leaving positive or neutral feedback, depending on the outcome of my request, but this seller would not admit the misrepresentation and left me no choice but to post negative feedback.
Needless to say, that was about 15 months ago. I've neither bought nor sold anything on eBay in the past year. I don't think I will be going back.
In all likelihood, I believe the RIAA would prefer to make copyright infringement a capital offense.
The executions, themselves, will be recorded (and copyrighted) and then tacked on the beginning of every DVD or future media type.
After a few years, consumers will be able to purchase "The best of RIAA Executions" in a variety of formats (each disk or download fully protected by DRM, of course).
Pardon me for reading the article (read about it in a couple of places, actually), but the scientists reassembled a replica of the genome using hundreds of partial sequences ordered from different labs. All they did was assemble them. It's no insignificant feat, but it is far from creating a new genome.
C'mon y'all. Would you say someone programmed a pieces of software if all they did was copy/paste code snippets from existing code, lined them up, and compiled it (they add nothing of their own). It takes smarts, yes, but it is not coding.
The way it reads, it almost sounds like the way Google widgets interact on a customized Google search page.
Ending slavery has nothing to do with an evolutionary process. It has to do with constraints of a moral society. Remember, too, that slavery throughout most of history was nothing like salvery as it was practiced in the colonial era and in the United States. Being an employee today is not dissimilar to being a slave through much of history. People sold themselves into slavery in order to pay off debts. We work long hours to pay off our debts. If anything, the difference is in degrees of magnitude, not simply in the basic concept.
Pardom me if this mini-rant-around-a-question goes long. I started playing D&D (the basic boxed set) and AD&D ages ago--first on 1st Ed. rules and eventually ponying up for 2nd Ed. My friends and I liked the game because it was easy and simple (regarding game mechanics) in the first edition, and we did enjoy some of the changes going into 2nd E. (though we did opt to keep the original Ranger class, as our gaming world was very Norse and giant-heavy). For those of us who wanted games with more realistic (if you can use that term for a Fantasy RPG) combat mechanics, different skill allocation methods, and other detailed tables, we had RuneQuest, Palladium, and dozens of other options. The game was well-established, and players could be found anywhere.
With the arrival of the 3rd Ed. rules, you lost me as a regular player, along with many of my peers (we may be a bit older now, but we are the ones with regular salaries and a desire to continue the delusion of ongoing youth by purchasing simple amusements like games). I had no desire to relearn a gaming system that, for the most part, had its rules embedded in my head. The 3.5 Ed.? Didn't even pay attention. Fourth edition? Sorry, but not interested.
My own sons are old enough to play now. I've been shopping around for some of the early 1st and 2nd Ed. books so my kids and I may try out the game together, but until that happens, we bide our time playing Guild Wars (online) and Magic: The Gathering (offline).
My question is this: who are you trying to please? Do you have a core group of early gamers who will buy anything AD&D just because you print it? Are you attracting any younger gamers to the fold? If not, what's the point in publishing release after release after release? It's as bad as auto makers manufacturing '08 vehicles that are effectively the same as the '07s (Oh!, but the door for the gas cap is now square!).
The question I'm asking beneath the surface is, "Why should I care at all?" Unless the rules are relatively simple--something that won't require me to buy an entire library of books--you won't win me back. Once upon a time, only three books were needed for hours (months, and years) of fun: the DM handbook, the Player's handbook, and a Monster Manual (and the creative DM could get by without the MM). In all honesty, it looks like you are using the glorious history of (perhaps) the most storied RPG franchise of our time and using only as a perpetual money maker for your company. The more I hear about subsequent editions, the more I get the impression that you don't give a crap about the players out there (the people who made the game great in the first place), and that you simply wonder how much more you can squeeze the golden goose before it dies.
That's not Fisher Price--that's Teletubby land.
I big, bad company like Google picking on a itsy-bitsy company like Microsoft. Will there never be justice in this world?
It's not research, but it is what I know.:
Regardless how little mercury is in a CF bulb, it still is mercury, and that means I can't throw them in the trash when they are dead. I have to pay to take them to a hazardous waste disposal site, and some in our area are pressing to require hazmat cleanup for broken bulbs.
Now, in a house with only adults, broken bulbs may be a rare occurrence, but I remember tons of broken bulbs when I was a kid (and have had a few around our child-filled house as well). Unless regular curbside pickup becomes a reality, those bulbs will have to be stored somewhere until the run to the hazardous waste site is made, and not everyone has available storage space or a garage. People alredy throw these bulbs in the trash. While the amount of mercury in each may be far less than in one old mercury thermometer, think of how many of these will be disposed by each household. It will add up.
I'm not opposed to the use of CF bulbs, but am opposed to being forced to use them. Have you found one that works with a dimmer switch? I'm more in favor of allowing CF bulbs to remain an option, but moving more quickly toward LED lighting. They use even less energy, last even longer, and do not have the same level of contaminant concerns as CF bulbs (whether you accept all the CF contaminant arguments or not).
Under U.S. law, a company does not need to be a true monopoly (i.e., the only player in a sector) to be classified a monopoly. The threshold there (imlu, ianal) is whether or not the company yields monopoly-like influence over the market, including the creation of significant barriers to entry for potential competitors.
That said, the growing success of Linux (and the Mac OS)will ensure that one day--who knows how soon--Microsoft will use the Linux saturation levels as an argument against sanctions it faced (faces) as a monopoly. That's when the OS war will finally reach the point of full engagement.